While there have been many briefcase and clipboard style devices conceived for special purposes, the difficult problem of containing and displaying of blueprint drawings in a working environment has not been effectively addressed. Blueprints, which can be as large as 2 or 3 feet wide and 3 or 4 feet long, can be unwieldy documents, and the customary way of carrying them is to roll a package of drawings up into a tube-shape length secured by a strap or rubber bands. This makes handling the documents very difficult in the hostile outdoor or indoor environment, perhaps in windy conditions, as a flat surface must be found to roll out the documents. The blueprints must be restrained from their tendency to roll back up again either by being held down manually or by being weighted at the corners. These difficulties are compounded when the blueprints must be carried from one portion of the working site to another and used by various personnel on a construction project.
As the number of blueprints on a large construction project is also large, carrying the blueprints together in a large package prevents difficulties of keeping them organized as well as the difficulties of displaying in a flat fashion. The bundles of documents tend to become separated and inconvenient to collect, collate and carry away at the end of a working day on a construction site.
The within invention seeks to address these problems by providing a specifically configured carrying folio that will accommodate large and small sizes, restrain the blueprint documents from their tendency to curl or flutter in hostile weather conditions, and further provide a means of conveniently transporting large numbers of documents in an organized fashion. The construction of the device described herein has become possible with the development and commercialization of modern materials and manufacturing methods that would not have been possible in earlier times. Thus it is an objective of the within invention to provide a means of carrying large and small blueprint documents conveniently.
A further objective of the invention is to accommodate either small numbers or large thicknesses of documents in a carrier that will accommodate these variations.
Yet another objective of the within invention is to provide a carrier that can also serve as a display surface for maintaining the blueprints in a flat configuration on the work site.
A further objective of this invention is to securely retain the blueprint documents yet enable use of multiple documents without losing or removing other documents in the stack.
A final objective of the within invention is to provide a display surface that has sufficient rigidity to be posted on a vertical surface for a convenient working display at a construction site. These and other objectives are achieved by the specifically configured folio described herein.